Holiday Tour Day 22: Marcus on AI and One One Cacao
Coded with organic intelligence
Welcome to Day 22 of the Cacao Muse Holiday Tour! We have a special guest joining us today, and a very special chocolate that none of us ever thought possible.
We have just three more days left in the Tour—and that means just three more 24-hour periods to get in on a life-long premium Cacao Muse membership at a 20% off FOREVER rate:
In the last episode, ChatGPT delivered an authoritative-sounding description of the meaning of the Number Twenty-Two, today’s calendar date and also the current Tour Day. Some people were reportedly furious that ChatGPT got a cameo appearance in the Cacao Muse Holiday Tour. Let me set the record straight—that was not a true cameo, it was a few lines of prompted text in the lead-in for the upcoming feature. We did not replace a SAG actor or a WGA screenwriter. The actual cameo is in today’s episode.
I mean, really, people? If you want to get mad at a generative AI bot, go read The Muse. Or today’s featured author.
TCM Holiday Tour Day 22 pairing:
MARCUS ON AI and ONE ONE CACAO
In the world of AI and technology, Gary Marcus needs no introduction. I of course am going to do one anyway.
Gary is a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur (Founder of Robust.AI and Geometric.AI, acquired by Uber). An Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he’s the author of five books, most recently Rebooting AI with Ernest Davis, which is one of Forbes’s 7 Must Read Books in AI. He frequently contributes to The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times.
Above all, he has been a leading voice in artificial intelligence for many years. He is well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance, and for his research in human language development and cognitive neuroscience.
Here on Substack, he writes Marcus on AI—a no-holds-barred assessment & commentary on the dynamic, and often dramatic, landscape of generative AI. He also produces a podcast called Humans versus Machines.
In short, Gary keeps the AI community honest—something much needed these days not just in the overhyped tech circles, but in the business world in general.
And for the first time ever, Gary tells us what his favorite chocolate is. You heard it here first, folks.
Please welcome
and .
[Shuffling sounds off-stage. Indistinct voices talking. Someone taps the mic.]
Stage manager [to Birgitte]: Just got word that Gary’s running a little late.
Birgitte: Do we have any filler material? We’ve got a full house here. They all want to know what Gary’s favorite chocolate is.
Stage manager [scratches head]: Hmm, no. We’ve never needed any fillers.
Birgitte: Stand-up comedians? Indie rock bands? What happened to Boss Cat and his peeps? What about the Art Dogs?
Stage manager: They’re, uh, on PTO. It’s Christmas this weekend, so I let them go.
[Birgitte grimaces in frustration]
Stage manager: Wait, I have an idea. Be right back.
[Stage manager dashes off-stage. A few minutes later he returns with a laptop. Connects it via cable to the big projection screen overhead. A familiar wreath-shaped icon flashes up on the screen to the inhouse audience, and the millions of viewers around the world who’ve logged in for this event.]
Birgitte: We can’t—I can’t do this.
Stage manager: Yes we can. I’m on it! [taps mic] Hello everyone, thanks so much for your patience. Gary Marcus will be with us in just a moment, but first, we’d like to bring onto the stage—er, the screen—three special guests. I’d like to present to you ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard. Since they have access to a vast volume of human knowledge and written works, we thought it’d be fun to ask them about Gary’s chocolate of choice.
[Birgitte turns a paler shade of her normal skin color, but manages to smile nervously for the cameras]
Stage manager: Alright Birgitte, take it away!
Birgitte: Right, thanks Yann. [she plugs the mic into the laptop]. Okay, let’s start with you ChatGPT.
Birgitte: Thanks, Chat. I haven’t seen Gary post anything public about his chocolate choices. He did try a dish called “Czech pork-belly moussaka” once but that’s a chocolate bridge too far in my professional opinion. Alright let’s turn to you now Bard.
Birgitte: Heh, yes we’ll definitely ask him directly! Thanks for those highlights, cute touch. By the way you forgot about ruby chocolate, might want to add that to your little database. And the “chocolate with nuts or fruit,” the technical term for that is inclusion. Ok, last but not least, Claude!
Birgitte: Short but sweet, thank you Claude. Way to go not wasting any pixels. [turns to the audience] The consensus is pretty clear folks—Gary’s chocolate preferences are solidly locked away in the vault of public non awareness.
[Yann the Stage Manager rushes up to Birgitte and whispers something in her ear]
Birgitte: Oh, perfect timing. We’ve just gotten word that Gary has arrived. TCM, take it away! We can’t take the suspense any longer.
The Cacao Muse: Gary, welcome welcome! Appreciate your making the time to be here with us. The burning question everyone’s been waiting for is, what is your favorite chocolate.
Gary Marcus: Thanks for having me! Favorite chocolate: all the wild and edgy flavors from Chicago-based Vosges. When I lived in NYC, their Soho shop (sadly now closed!) was a favorite place to bring visitors. My favorites aren’t there any more, but the banana and the pink caramel are the kind of thing I like.
Birgitte: Ah, Vosges! Great choice. I like “wild and edgy.” Has a definite New York City vibe to it. Well, we have a little surprise for you Gary. We’re going to create a new, wild & edgy chocolate just for you. We’re going to use a new production technique we call the LCM—the Large Chocolate Model.
Gary: Interesting. Guessing it’s similar to a LLM.
Birgitte: Yes exactly. Just as a transformer LLM predicts text based on its training data’s typical sequence, so a transformer LCM predicts flavor blends based on the local ingredients. It’s really pretty ingenious. The one challenge we’ve had is finding a chocolate maker willing to work with us. Because, you know, many people see generative chocolate as deeply flawed. But we don’t scrape massive vats of ingredients—just a few samples at first and then the chocolate maker goes and scales up production in their own factory.
But this won’t be anything like that Czech pork-belly moussaka you tried ten years ago. By the way, I’m Czech and there’s definitely no such dish in our cuisine. I almost threw up when I read about it.
Anyway, we did find our chocolate maker in the end. I’d like to welcome Nick Davis on stage.
[Enter Nick. He sits down next to Gary.]
Birgitte: Nick, thanks so much for coming all the way out here. The name of your chocolate company is One / One Cacao. I know that’s a direct reference to binary code. Most people would just say Eleven—reading “one one” the normal way—so that’s pretty ingenious.
Nick: Well, actually, the phrase comes from an old Jamaican proverb, “One one cocoa full basket.” It teaches us that if we do things a little at a time, we will reach our goals. One cacao bean at a time fills up the basket.
Birgitte: Love that. So One One in binary code is 1011. And yet your bars have three segments of zeroes, as in Zero Zero Zero. Wondering if there’s a connection there.
Nick: Umm, no, it’s really just the proverb. Would you like to try the chocolate I’ve brought you and Gary?
Birgitte: Absolutely, that’s why we’re all here! [Nick presents a bar of Sorrel White Chocolate to Birgitte and Gary] Oh this is gorgeous. We’d love to hear the details of the LCM you used to create it.
Nick: To be quite frank, we tried it a few times, but it came up with some strange blends. None of which we would consider palatable.
Gary: Anything like pork-belly moussaka from the Czech Republic?
Nick: Not quite that, but it did come up with an ackee-saltfish bar, and also a goat-curry & jerk-chicken inclusion, which just fell apart as you can imagine (think chicken and goat mud wrestling). Another time it suggested a simple coconut milk bar, but using rum instead of milk. These models are just not accurate, or reliable. So we made our own, by hand.
Gary: That’s hardly surprising. It’s what I’ve been saying for years—these models are nowhere near AGI, or ACI1 for that matter.
Chocolate: Sorrel white chocolate
Percentage: 51%
Origin: Jamaica
Ingredients: Cocoa butter (Trinitario), unrefined cane sugar, sorrel, oat flour.
Price: $12.00
Tasting Notes: This chocolate blew my mind. The moment it hits your tongue, its light, cozy bed of cacao butter starts melting its red tangy juicy lemony berry hibiscus all over your palate. Your mouth waters long after it’s gone… it’s like the waters of a stream full of fruit have been set free. Reminds me of the scents of the Caribbean sea.
TCM: Gary, it’s been a pleasure. Last question as we wrap up, is there anything you’d change about the chocolate industry?
Gary: I’d like to see better working conditions (shade, please!) and wages for the workers who make it all possible.
Nick: That’s what we’re doing here in Jamaica, we source our cocoa beans Direct Trade and pay premiums that exceed those of Fair Trade by an average of 15 times. We deposit our payments directly into the bank accounts of our farmers, without any middle men to take a cut.
Birgitte: That’s impressive Nick! That’s worth every penny of the twelve dollars.
[Off-stage, Yann signals to Birgitte that it’s time to wrap up]
Birgitte: Thank you so much Gary and Nick for coming from so far away.
And that, my friends, is why the best chocolate is always hand crafted—and why we need a strong voice of reason in this overhyped world of AI.2
COMING UP! DAY 23 of the TCM HOLIDAY TOUR
Tomorrow we might have to do a little bit of time travel to another kitchen, as our previously scheduled guest’s Internet froze over. He’s in Vermont, and the Internet freezing up there is a real thing.
Unless he can manage to thaw the pipes…
For those not familiar with this acronym we just cooked up, ACI = artificial chocolate inclusions
Disclaimer: Nick Davis is a real live person and the actual owner of One / One Cacao. His lines in this episode are purely fictitious. However, had he been on stage with Gary Marcus and Birgitte IRL, given the context of this scenario, he might have said similar things. Gary Marcus, of course, is also a real live person and the actual author of Marcus on AI. His interview responses to The Cacao Muse are real; however, his dialogue with Nick and any lines related to LCM/ACI have been crafted in Birgitte’s imagination. Birgitte Rasine is also a real live person and the actual author of The Cacao Muse. In her case, however, we cannot vouch for which side of reality she lives in at any given moment in time. Maybe when they figure out quantum computing.
Genius! Lovely to "meet" these guests too, very inspiring. You know, after being inundated with Big Chocolate's monopolistic presence my whole life, it's very refreshing to notice just how many of these folks are doing chocolate the healthy, hand-crafted, ethically sourced, well-paying way.
There's a sense, especially in the imperial core, that the sheer overwhelm of the world as it is demands we accede to it. But in fact, people have been carving out different lifeways all along, and will continue to do so.
To me, that's something worth paying top dollar for.
People and their opinions :) I think seeing what ChatGPT says is interesting - and love looking up what it says about me :)